The world shook when #Scandoval came to light, but now she’s moving on. Raquel Leviss is ready to move on with a new boyfriend after being directly involved with one of the biggest scandals in reality show history.
Rachel “Raquel” Leviss joined Vanderpump Rules in Season 5 as the girlfriend of longtime cast member James Kennedy. She was a recurring cast member from Seasons 6 to 8 before being promoted as a main cast member for Seasons 9 and 10. Before the Season 10 reunion, it was revealed that Tom Sandoval was cheating on his longtime girlfriend Ariana Madix with Leviss. As a result, Leviss voluntarily left the show in season 11.
In an episode of her podcast, “Rachel Goes Rogue,” in December 2023, Raquel also explained that she chose to leave Vanderpump Rules to not cause more “pain” towards Madix. “I could only imagine the pain I would cause by filming in the same environment with Ariana,” she said. “Being involved with somebody’s boyfriend while they’re still in a relationship is a huge betrayal and so painful as it is.”
She went on to also compare her affair with Tom Sandoval to her ex-fiance, James Kennedy. “Then to continue working with these people,” she said. “And seeing the person that you loved so much and you thought they loved you just as much as you loved them, be conversing with this other person, it would just be so catastrophic, and I didn’t want to do that to Ariana. I didn’t want to put her in that position.”
She continued, “Looking back at that season, I was at my lowest of lows. Filming Vanderpump Rules after breaking off an engagement with James, that was my first mistake, because I should’ve taken the time to heal and find a therapist.” She went on to explain how she’s started to “gain some clarity” on the affair since cutting ties with Tom. “This is not an excuse, but I was not in a good mental space,” she said. “It was a hard process to completely cut him out of my life.” She continued, “It’s really embarrassing. But I see a girl who is going through pain and doesn’t have the right tools to tackle it, and she’s coping in the way that she feels like her needs are being met.”
Who is Raquel Leviss’s boyfriend?
Leviss said that she would take a break from dating for a year to focus on herself, but it seems like she’s on the move. Here’s who Raquel Leviss’s boyfriend is.
Matthew Dunn (2024 - present)
Raquel Leviss is currently linked with Matthew Dunn. The former reality star and the single dad were rumored to be together after she posted a video of her with him on an ATV with the caption, “More of this please.”
Leviss’s publicist clarified on April 30, 2024, that the two haven’t labeled what they are yet. “It’s a little too soon to jump to any labels,”her publicisttold PeopleTuesday. “They met a little over a month ago and are friends just getting to know each other. They met and are hanging out.”
Tom Sandoval (2022 - 2023)
News broke of Tom Sandoval and Raquel Leviss’s affair in March 2023 two days after Ariana found an explicit video of Tom and Raquel on his phone. A month later, Tom claimed in an interview on the “Howie Mandel Does Stuff” podcast that he and Raquel were taking a break from their relationship. “We’re really good friends. We’re not putting any label on it,” he said. Tom also denied that he and Raquel were “friends with benefits.”
In May 2023, news broke that Tom and Raquel had broken nine months after their affair started. “Raquel dipped out. Sandoval is not the one for her,” a source toldPage Sixat the time.“Raquel dipped out. Sandoval is not the one for her.”
A source forThe Messenger, however, claimed that Tom was the one who ended the relationship to “focus” on his music career with his cover band, Tom Sandoval & The Most Extras. “His relationships with everyone right now are on the back burner, and he’s focusing on his music,” the source said. “He’s about to turn 40 and trying his best to move away from all of this, but he’s struggling at times. Like anyone trying to better themselves, it’s one day at a time.”
A source also denied toPeoplethat Tom and Raquel broke up because they were never in a relationship in the first place. “Tom and Raquel never put a label on their relationship to begin with,” the insider said. “After their affair was exposed and the blowback they received, they said that before defining things, they needed to take time to address the issues in their own lives that drove them to this in the first place. And that’s where things still are.”
Tom Schwartz (2022)
A big shocking moment of Season 10 was when Raquel Leviss kissed Tom Schwartz. In her podcast, Rachel Goes Rogue, she said that she initiated the rumor as “part of our inside joke” because fans were convinced they kissed at Coachella.
After the rumors began, she admitted “a little seed [was] planted in my head that, oh, like, that could be a fun storyline for season 10 and because we’re both single, and so when I made that move, he turned it down, and I was like, ‘Okay, that’s that.’ Like, I’m not going to try again because it was stupid to begin with it and he clearly wasn’t into it.”
She also added that Schwartz knew about her affair with Tom Sandoval“since the very beginning.” She explained, “I got a phone call from Tom the next morning afterwe hooked up for the first time, and my mind was racing. I was feeling so much guilt and shame about it. And I finally got a phone call from Sandoval and he was at Schwartz’s apartment when he called me, and that was like a safe space for him.”
James Kennedy (2016 - 2021)
Raquel Leviss dated and was engaged to James Kennedy from 2016 to 2021. The two met at a New Year’s Eve party in 2016 and became engaged in 2021 after James threw a Rachella themed proposal.
Kennedy addressed his cheating rumors in 2017 after many employees at SUR claimed to have slept with him. “Obviously, I understand all the rumors and drama and everything that’s happened on the show. You know we’ve basically gone through it together and I felt like these girls went to the end of the Earth to try and ruin my relationship,” he told Bravo about the claims that he was unfaithful in March 2017. “But we’ve stuck through everything and we love each other. But that’s what makes relationships stronger is going through hard times and good times.”
The two called off their engagement the day after filming the season 9 reunion. “It was kind of at Thanksgiving where I realized that I didn’t want to be in this relationship anymore,” she said, noting that an argument between Kennedy and her dad over the holiday gave her clarity. “The future of Thanksgivings and Christmases and holidays was looking like it was going to be either James or my family. Especially, like, if we had a baby, James would make my parents out as, like, the not good grandparents and kind of put that in their heads. Foreseeing this future and what it was all coming down to, [I realized] I don’t want that.”
